Error using dtstr2dtvecmx Failed on converting date string to date number. Error in datevec (line 117) y = dtstr2dtve​cmx(t,icu_​dtformat);

Here is the script:

clear all; close all

clc

%%%% Directories

direc1 = '/Users/Degausseridae/Documents/Research/EggLoggerData/sas_00_createmetadata_Needs/';

direc2 = '/Users/Degausseridae/Documents/Research/EggLoggerData/sas_00_createmetadata_Produces/';

%%%% File to be read in

file2Load = 'BNSTdata.csv';

formatSpec1 = '%s %u %u %s %s %u %u %u %s %u %s %s %s %s %s %s %s %s %f %f %f %s %s %s %u %s';

formatIn = 'mm/dd/yyyy';

N = 26;

%%%% Import file

fileID = fopen([direc1,file2Load]);

C_data = textscan(fileID,formatSpec1,N,'Headerlines',1,'Delimiter',',');

fclose(fileID);

%%%% logger start date

sDate = datevec(C_data{1,13},formatIn);

Here is the error:

Error using dtstr2dtvecmx Failed on converting date string to date number.

Error in datevec (line 117) y = dtstr2dtvecmx(t,icu_dtformat);

Error in sas_00_createmetadata_GT (line 42)

sDate = datevec(C_data{1,13},formatIn);

I've attached the csv file I'm using

Answer 1

[Rajanya]

Hi @Gregory,

I was able to replicate the issue and encountered the same error.

The error arises because ‘C_data{1,13}’ contains some empty character cells ({0x0 char}). This is likely due to an incorrect import process.

Removing these empty character cells from ‘C_data{1,13}’ resolved the error.

d = C_data{1,13};
emptyIndex = cellfun(@isempty, d); % The ‘cellfun’ function is used to apply the ‘isempty’ function 
% to each element in ‘d’, identifying the indices of the empty character cells.
C_filtered = d(~emptyIndex);
sDate = datevec(C_filtered,formatIn);  % works fine

If you like to explore more about ‘cellfun’, you can refer to its documentation page by executing the following command in the MATLAB Command Window:

doc cellfun

Hope this helps!